Colorado voters will have an opportunity this November to see if their state can do without $2.1 billion in tax revenue every year.
A shadowy group of anti-taxers operating anonymously gathered enough signatures on petitions to put three tax change initiatives on the ballot. One would re-quire school districts to cut taxes and leave it up to the state to make up the $1.6 billion loss. Another would prevent the state from borrowing money and limit the power of local governments to borrow. The third would reduce the state income tax rate and slash vehicle and telecommunication fees.
Once these proposals were put on the fall ballot, state statisticians went to work. They discovered that forcing school districts to cut the property tax and shove the burden onto the state would require Colorado to spend almost all of its current budget on education, leaving little for law enforcement, highways, water management, parks and wildlife and other responsibilities state government has to its citizens.
The other forced reductions in the income tax, on motor vehicle registration fees and fees on telecommunication services — that’s cell phones, land line phones and cable services — were so severe that an organization that calls itself Coloradoans for Responsible Reform, a coalition of business and labor groups, was formed to oppose the measures.
They estimate passage of all three would cost 73,000 jobs, most in the private sector.
And this month a large majority of the state’s Republican legislators signed a letter addressed to all of Colorado urging their constituents to reject the measures.
“I don’t see them as good policy,” said State Senator Greg Brophy, a conservative from the state’s eastern plains, who worries that the proposals would make it virtually impossible to balance the budget. “It’s like losing your job and getting sick at the same time. I’m for limited government, but not no government.”
The prospect of a severely crippled government doesn’t bother some in our neighboring state. Estimates are that the tax reductions would save the average family about $1,360 a year. That cheery prospect has apparently convinced 52 percent of the population to support slashing property taxes used to support the public schools, regardless of what damage might be done to the schools or to the state at large.
MANY FRIGHTENED opponents of these three ballot initiatives worry that they may pass because voters will be gulled by the promise of lower taxes into voting for them without any understanding of the consequences. And pollsters agree. Most Coloradoans surveyed thus far say they don’t really know about the measures or what the consequences of passing them would be.
No surprise. Anti-tax rhetoric fills the airwaves and the blogo-sphere. Ask any random group if they want lower taxes. Heck yes will be the answer. Ask the same folks if they want lousy schools and highways full of potholes and at least a few will say of course not.
And that’s the reason that enacting law through voter referendum very often produces bad government.
A ballot initiative doesn’t provide for an analysis of the proposal it makes. There is no equiv-alent to study and debate within a legislative committee and again before a House of Representatives and still again by another legislative body before the proposed action comes before a governor who may veto it and require still more analysis and debate before it dies or becomes law.
Coloradoans should re-ject all three of these misbegotten efforts to cut off funding for all of the things that their government does for them. And then they should put an initiative abolishing referendum and initiative on the next statewide ballot and hope that it passes by an overwhelming majority.
The founding fathers weren’t fools. That’s why they went for representative democracy rather than direct democracy. One works. The other doesn’t.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
